I give him a thumbs up with my bandaged stump.
The adrenaline is starting to ebb, leaving me shaky and cold. I need to tell Nico we’re okay. I didn’t hear him say anything during all that. Is he still on the phone?
I push myself up to the passenger seat, careful to avoid the shards of broken window glass as I grab the phone from the dashboard mount. Stringy ectoplasm slimes my fingers, and I quickly drop the device and wipe my hands on my pants. The phone is doused with it, and the screen is dark. I wonder if the ectoplasm messed up the speakers.
I find Griffin’s phone wedged into the glovebox and get him to unlock it before using it to call Nico again.
He picks up on the first ring. “What happened? Is Zo?—”
“Zoey’s fine.” I put him on speaker so that the others can hear him. “We got Morrow. Everyone’s okay.”
“You’re sure?” He sounds wrecked, his voice unsteady. I can’t imagine how scary it must have been for him to be on the phone listening to that when he was too far away to help. “You’re all?—”
“I’m sure,” I say. “We’re all okay.”
“And Benji?” Nico asks.
“Did amazing,” I say.
“Am I on speaker?” Nico asks. When I tell him yes, he says loudly, “Benj, you hear that? I’m so proud of you.”
I hear a shaky laugh and glance over my shoulder to see DJ wrapping Benji in a hug so tight I feel soothed just looking at them.
I want to stay and talk to Nico more, but I realize we forgot something again. I pass the phone to Benji, who launches right into a detailed account of the extraction. DJ’s hands have calmed down when I ask her to help me back into the wheelchair.
She and I head back into the building and find Henley exactly where we left him, curled up against a wall with his knees pulled to his chest.
He scrambles backward when he sees us, his hands coming up to protect himself.
“Hey,” I say, making my voice as gentle as I can. “I’m not going to hurt you. None of this was your fault.”
Tears are streaming down his face, glistening in the small amount of light reaching him from outside. He looks at my bandaged hand. A sob tears out of his throat.
“I didn’t—” His sobs are too powerful for him to get the words out. “I don’t—I didn’t mean to?—”
I tell him everything, explaining Morrow, explaining possession, and how none of what he remembers doing was actually him. It’s not how I’m supposed to tell him, but the time for gentle explanations passed at some point after Benji salted his eyes. He shakes his head the entire time I’m talking. DJ takes over when Henley starts to panic, assuring him that we’re going to take him to the hospital. Eventually, he nods and walks out of the building with us on unsteady legs.
On the ride to the hospital, Zoey gives me the phone, and I press it tightly against my ear as I tell Nico every detail of what happened.
“He must’ve thought if he could kill the rest of the team, he could get away with possessing and killing as long as he wanted,” Nico says. “In his mind, he’d already killed three of us. He wasn’t expecting to see you alive.”
“Guess we really sold it, huh?” I say.
There’s a long pause. Did I say the wrong thing?
I wish I could crawl through the phone and be there in the hospital with him, so I could see exactly what his face is doing and reassure him that all of us are okay.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “I guess we did.”
Part of me deflates when DJ tells Nico to rest and forces him to hang up the phone. At the house, Griffin gives me a piggyback ride down the stairs into the containment vault so I can choosethe drawer Morrow will rot in. At least until we find his anchor. I fill out an ID card. Griffin does an audible snort as I slap it on the drawer:
NAME:Morrow, Alan
ALIAS:“The Game Master”
ACTIVE:1974 – 1979
CLASSIFICATION:Possessor
